1980. Sue Me Sue You - Final British Gig.

At the beginning of 1980 Guys n' Dolls began to make regular trips to Holland to work on the first album for EMI Holland. They had put us together with top Dutch producer Gerrard Stellard who had a much more up to date approach to recording than we had before.

Another thing that was looming was a court case with our first managers AMMO productions who were sueing us for breach of contract and claimed that we owed them £12,906.00p We put in a counter claim that they in fact owed us £928.00p. It always amazed me that the two sides had basically the same facts and came up with two competely different results in favour of their own side. I had a couple of conversations with Geoff Morrow and David Martin to see if it could be sorted out amicably but they were intent on going to court. As this covered the early years of the group it involved David Van Day and Thereze Bazar, it also involved a bit of a family split for Julie as her sister Debbie was married to David Martin at the time.

Our first day in The High Court in London was 28th January 1980. Julie was not present as she had glandular fever but we met David and Thereze for the first time since the split and at first it was a bit strained, but after a while the atmosphere settled down as we got involved with the court proceedings which at times were incredibly boring. On the second day our council raised a very crucial point. He said that as AMMO had brought the case to court they should be made to put up five thousand pounds in the event of us winning as he was doubting their financial standing. The judge agreed with this and AMMO immediately appealed. The appeal was held on 1st February in front of Lord Denning who dismissed the appeal and AMMO had two months to raise the money. In the event they were unable to do this and the case never returned to court, and the only people to win were the barristers as it cost us and AMMO a considerable amount in court costs which we had to pay.

During the last two years we had noticed the gradual decline of the cabaret club circuit in England. When we first started live work in 1975, we would perform for a whole week in one club and move on to the next. Over the past two years many clubs had closed and the ones that remained open were only having acts for two or three days a week. Due to our popularity in Holland the idea of a move over there was discussed. We had released our first Dutch Album after having a top ten hit with our first release for EMI Holland, called "Our Song".

Julie and Dominic were expecting their first baby and we did our last performance on 14th June at The Fiesta Stockton before having time off for Julie. Julie and Dominic's son Luke was born on Sunday 3rd August 1980. Barely a month later we were back at work, but during the time off Ray Monk had told us that he and the rest of the Guys n' Dolls band had decided to go out on their own and were leaving us. We played a theatre in Yarmouth and comedian Lenny Henry was one of the support acts. When he heard we were looking for musicians he put us on to a friend of his and within a few weeks we had a new band.

We performed another week at The London Palladium supporting the late Victor Borge, but more changes were in the air. Martine and our dutch producer Gerrard Stellard were now an item and she wanted to leave the group and settle down in Holland. Julie Dominic and myself decided that we would replace Martine and carry on but we would stop performing in England and concentrate solely on Holland.

In December we flew to Switzerland for a big TV show at Lake Lugano and returned to Birmingham where we performed our last ever gig in England.

(Click on photo to enlarge.)